Low life
In solitary
Jeffrey Bernard
I'm tucked away in the country at the moment halfway between Andover and Salisbury in a borrowed cottage that isn't much like any of the country retreats that I've lived in before. A far cry from my old farmhouse on top of the Lambourn Downs, this place has fitted carpets and central heating. The garden is crawling with furtive-looking cock pheasants which arc being reared in a copse opposite for the shoot, and it's no wonder that they look so furtive being as they are one of the world's most feckless and adulterous animals. It seems that when a hen pheasant meets a cock pheasant she believes almost everything he tells her. Then, poor cow, she watches with tears in her eyes as her mate nips around the hedge to have it off with her best friend. It's a small world. But I don't believe much that I'm told in the country. One local bore told me yesterday that we're in for a splendid summer because the birds are building their nests so high in the trees. Of course, if you believe that Mother Nature is such a soft touch then you'll believe anything. Just look at some
of the faces she puts on the front of some people's heads. And that business of put- ting plenty of berries on trees and hedges to ensure against a hard winter isn't necessari- ly so. Only Irish turkeys look forward to Christmas.
But I'm not here to take in the coun- tryside. I'm here to work on some magazine jobs and a television number and, by jingo, it's been all go so far. Since I arrived a week ago, I've spent six hours a day staring into a log fire. I've read Great Expectations, a biography of Misia Sert, Our Mutual Friend, Weir of Hermiston and, I'm sorry to say, the Wilts and Dorset bus timetable plus the British Rail timetable at least 20 times. Why is that as soon as I get to the country I start planning the escape route? But, as you may know or can guess, there is a very good secondhand bookshop in Salisbury. There is also a Marks & Spencer, a lovely racecourse and a pub called the New Inn which serves very good lunches, charges only 95p for a large one and doesn't have a single machine in it for the purpose of electronic wanking. Sadly, my immediate local has not only got Space Invaders but two fruit machines and a bloody juke box. It also serves that ghastly misnomer the Ploughman's Lunch.
But with all the goodies in and around Salisbury — and a television set is arriving this morning — who would have the heart to disturb a perfectly harmless typewriter and despoil virgin paper? Benny Green would, I know, and Derek Jameson would probably instruct his solicitors on my Olym- pia Monica Electronic de Luxe. All I can do is wonder who on earth Monica was or is. Possibly the mistress or the managing direc- tor of Olympia Typewriters, or maybe his daughter. And who was Mercedes Benz and what was she to Carl Benz? I think we should be told. And as you can see, what with such thoughts crowding in, very little work is getting done. Anyway, I'm too busy cooking, eating and pondering the next meal when I'm not making tea to sip by the log fire. Retrospect is also an enemy of what little promise there might have been, and the country always makes me retrospective. It's the silence, I think.
Outside the window by which 1 sit there's an apple tree that's coming to life and it's a nice enough apple tree, not that you'd bother much with it in a London garden. But here, it's admission to a retrospective exhibition in the head and reminds me of the apple tree in Suffolk which I considered hanging myself from 15 years ago. It's also a bit like the one in Lambourn that I used to bang my head against from time to time. Theirees in the wood nearby are simply sin- ister as they always are and remind me of school walks and the misery of those days. Try as I do to conjure up pictures and memories of garden parties, picnics, daisy chains and dalliance in the sunshine, the at- mosphere here and anywhere for me in the country is heavy. I get a strong feeling of loss in the country and perhaps past losses in the country are all that sharper because of the isolation therein. But however, fan-
ciful and foolish all this is, the country isn't healthy. They tell me that it's dangerous to take LSD unless you're very 'together', and I don't think you should look too closely at the honeysuckle around the cottage door. There are witches in most cottages and I'm feeling a bit like a Hansel without a Gretel here unless, of course, this typewriter is really and Olympia Gretel Electronic de Luxe.
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